Atlas opens his mouth.
“Don’t try to understand what I’m saying, Attie. The Denim likes you dumb.” Samuel sits up straight, eyes wide. “You’re both named after inanimate objects.”
“Come, Samuel.” Atlas bends down and grips Samuel’s arm.
Samuel shakes him off. “It’s like you people were born in Hollywood.”
Grinding his teeth, Atlas turns from him and sighs and turns around again. He yells.
“Is every topic a joke to you?” Atlas clutches his cut arm. “Dozens, merely moments ago, lay in their blood—you speak insults and, though I may not have comprehended entirely, yes, Samuel, I understood completely your berating, with a smile, the men and women barely eviscerated and broiled by the Accend you’d beg to attach yourself to. You should have simply taken a blade and joined her.”
Samuel sniffs.
“If this,” Atlas gestures to him, “doesn’t cease, I am leaving you here to choke on your drool and never returning.”
“Not everything,” Samuel says.
Atlas bends down. “Repeat.”
“Not everything’s a joke, stup—” Samuel rolls his eyes and swallows. “If you think I’m not feeling, don’t act like you know the first thing about me.”
Picking at his severed sleeve, Atlas forces an inhale, an exhale. Samuel takes a swig.
“I don’t hate them.” Samuel bites his cheek. “Never seen anything like that. My assimilation days, days before that—nothing compares. It’s not because of what she did or the blood or things she said. It was the screams. The air. Their eyes.” He looks up at Atlas. “If you think I don’t care, that I wanted to join in, you’ve never been dumber in your life.”
A chill pricks Atlas’s spine. He stares at the ground and pushes replaying images down the pothole that gapes at his feet, the jaws that stretch their jagged asphalt teeth and chew sickly lavender blackness and rumble the echo of a thousand screams. Atlas blinks and the hole closes. The ground lies as it was: weathered but solid.
“Never heard something like that. ’S almost like,” Samuel clears his throat, “all at once, the screams of everyone I’ve ever hurt came back for me.”
Atlas sits next to him on the curb and Samuel mumbles.
“And Eden’s never done something like that, not with me. We’ve always tried to be discreet and careful. Never like this. Never the kill just for the kill, for the smell, the feel.” He gulps the liquid in his bottle. “Eden wasn’t jus’ my plaything, Attie, and I’m not the only one who hides stuff. She practically raised me. She’s s-s-saved my life and was the only one there when—”
“—who you are, Samuel. This is nature. It’s their gift. You have an obligation to use humans’ gift of life well. It’s always hard at first. Come here. Shh. It’s okay, love.”
Samuel clutches her blouse and buries his head in her shoulder, tears streaking his cheek. Eden smooths her sheets around his back. She kisses his hair.
“You’re so beautiful.”
Atlas’s mind brushes these images; Samuel’s slurred words interrupt them as they began them.
“—neither of us was capable of trading Snoopy valentines but it was comfortable. None of this gory dystopia crap ’cause she was there to make our bodies go numb, which wuzsss okay.”
“I can’t have sympathy for you,” Atlas says.
His head swaying to the side, Samuel glares at Atlas through his eyelashes. “I don’ want your yucky sympathy.”
“You understand we must kill her.”
“Yeah.”
Samuel shakes his head and lets his face fall to his palms. The glass in his hand clinks to the road and rolls into a crevice at the gas station building’s base. He sits. Atlas watches. Hair brushing his wrists, Samuel doesn’t budge.
Atlas says, “We need to move. Gene is waiting.”
“Jus’ leave me here.”
He narrows his eyes. “Are you impaired in some way?”
“Surisly?”
“T—”
“You thought this was my normalness?”
Atlas exhales. “I believe that speech about you and your deranged Accend going numb together was very eloquent for a being halfway aware.”
A breeze rattles the bottle across the road. The overcast drifts. Samuel’s muffled voice slips through his fingers.
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
Atlas makes a face. “You’re welcome.”
Samuel’s shoulders bob up and down and muted coughs sink into his knees. Chin to his chest, back trembling, Samuel hugs his legs and wrings his pants and repeats his noises. Atlas leans toward him. He angles an ear.
“Samuel,” Atlas stares, “are you crying?”
“It was eloquent, wasn’ it? I am,” Samuel raises his voice; it breaks, “ssso elo-guent. So, so good with words.”
Atlas slaps his thighs, stands, and walks from Samuel.
“Do you think Denim could bleach her hair?”
He stops and turns around. “What?”
“But she doesn’t have the a’itude or the confidess or mystique or,” Samuel looks up from his knees, cheeks glistening, “the way Eden moves, the influence she’s over people. She definitely doesn’t have those hips.”
Atlas grabs Samuel’s arm and yanks him onto his feet. Samuel cringes and, crushing his circulation, Atlas drags Samuel for the gas station corner.
“We are leaving.”
Samuel’s head rolls toward him. “I haven’ forgotten, y’know.”
Atlas strides forward.
“You want me dead almost as much as you do Eden.” Samuel pokes Atlas’s shoulder. “No judgment here. But Pennsylvania’s got no cliffs like Sidera’s I can jump off of. Sucks beansss.”
Dimples studding his inner brow, Atlas shakes his head to all, or maybe nothing, and Samuel gasps. He searches the ground with squinted eyes.
“Where’s—” Samuel looks under one of his feet. “Where’s it?”
“Your liquid substances are gone.” Atlas throws him around the corner, toward the Mustang. “You are to exercise rationality. We have entered war and, from this moment on, cannot turn back.”
“Why’s tha’?”
“Eden has spilled first blood—human blood before my eyes. Earth is no longer safe.” Atlas pushes Samuel two steps ahead, grips the back of his collar, and says, “I will be your symbol of war and make this war mine.”
He glares at charcoal sky reflected in the Mustang’s windows and shadows of bloated cloud that tumble closer and darker down windshield’s tint. Horizons distant boom thunder that reaches Atlas in withered shreds; electricity shoots through his veins. He peers into a silver ring of cumuli swirling around black cumulonimbi, and it peers back. The frigid, silver iris burns his skin as the wind soothes it, whipping his irregular hair irregular, riding his bristled neck. Atlas tenses his fingers, rubs their charge, peers into the eye of the storm as he knows it and itches to there dive headfirst tearing cloud from cloud. Lightning glints her eye.
He wants to see that light leave.
XXV
Murder, Among Other Things, Needs a Good Explanation
Past the river that runs a mirror, the bank that bends the road, around the hills that rustle a west wind and cool tree clusters smoldering a deep, overcast jade, Samuel almost hits the freeway divider with his bumper.
“Dear heaven. Get me home.” Gene clutches the sides of her seat and gawks out the windshield. She pants. “Get me home.”
“Denim, your stupid level’s at ‘Attie’ if you’re wanting to shake hands with Eden, the police, and everyone in the tri-state area who owns a shotgun. They’ll all be on your doorstep.”
“Don’t crash. Don’t do it.”
Samuel swerves around a slower vehicle and purses his lips. Lightening tone, he glances at Gene.
“You’re human. You have food at your place, right?”
Gene sics her wide eyes on him and says in one breath, “You ate three packages of gas station cookies after rambli
ng for ten minutes about the bruise you got when Atlas shoved you into your car door. Then you threw up, ate some more, rambled about how Elisium would be better off with air purifiers but not as grunge so you wouldn’t invest, then sat silently in the parking lot for three hours, cried a little, ate a taquito, then a brownie, and refused to let me drive because ‘No, Denim, this is Eden 2.0 we’re talking about—if you knew how to handle her, then I’d be Bob Barker. Get me more cookies, woman.’ ”
Samuel scoffs. “Didn’t answer my question.”
He drives off the freeway ramp and onto a narrower highway. Gene talks about her limited encounters with impaired drivers and Samuel talks about his limited encounters with urination and how much alcohol left through such means. Atlas stares; he frequents that route. Samuel drives down another: the branch-bordered, inclined asphalt that pebbled road shoulders graze before residences and businesses. He revs up a slope and turns the last corner, onto Gene’s apartment complex parking lot. He parks before the stairway.
Gene climbs out of the vehicle, sways in place, holds her head, and then hurries to the building, up the stairs. Atlas and Samuel trail behind.
When they reach the stairs’ uppermost landing, Atlas bumps into Gene. She’s stopped before her doorstep; a man stands at it. Gene glares at him. Wrinkles elongating his eyes’ corners, hair sparse and sandy, a belt tucking his patterned dress shirt, belly hanging over it, the man glares back. Atlas curls his fingers and Samuel pushes off the last steps and they watch.
Gene says, “Dad?”
The man squeezes together his lips, puffs over them, and turns pink. “Genesis Walker.”
She spins around and slips between Samuel and Atlas. She runs down the stairs.
“Genesis Runner,” Samuel says.
“Gene, you come back here!”
Samuel laughs. “You own a shotgun, right?” he asks the man and then yells down the stairwell, “Next time, don’t doubt the prophet.” Atlas looks between the man, Samuel, and twists and looks at Gene flinging herself around the second landing. He presses off the porch platform and jogs down the stairs, into the street, around the corner, and meets the sidewalk: a straight course to Gene’s bobbing back. He chases her out of the complex’s entrance.
“Gene,” Atlas yells.
She runs.
“Gene.”
Atlas upturns a palm, outstretches his arm, and then swings his elbow back, bending his fingers in. He draws a gust from ahead. A wall of wind slams Gene’s front and throws her backward. She trips on a heel, staggers, falls back-first. Atlas sprints the last steps, wind rending forward momentum, and crouches. He catches her shoulders before they hit; he pulls her onto her feet and gasps dying wind and uses Absolute’s name in vain.
Gene shakes her head. “Mm-mm. I can’t—I can’t—”
Hair blasted back, Atlas catches his breath and turns Gene around. He clutches her shoulders and ducks, meets her eyes.
“Running from or to, Gene?”
“Pfft. Yeah.” She exhales and slaps her leg. “To, for sure.”
“You’re not being fully truthful.”
Gene flicks a lock of hair from her eye and shoves her forefinger into one sash strapping his chest. “And you’re not being fully smart-ful.”
Dropping his hands, Atlas makes a face.
“Okay. You know what? Yeah. I do. I run from things. ’S what I do and therapy avoidance and call avoidance and not paying rent and quitting my job and Helena and going with you and stopping it late-term and you should know this by now. You know what you should know? I think Samuel is the big, fat liar,” Gene bounces on the tips of her toes, “and I’ve been running from telling you.”
His brows tense. “I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, he and Eden have been acting like violent divorcees but Samuel’s the one that got us to Helena, remember? We were ambushed. You know what else? He also,” Gene lifts a finger, “drove the weird, non-freeway way to where Eden killed all those people and has been helping us not get killed because we’re important and—and how did Eden follow us so well to the lake? I thought before—but now everything’s very, very wrong and people drink when they feel guilty and why is he really hanging with us? He keeps popping in and out and I’m not sure of everything but—”
“You believe it has all been a lie?” Atlas glances back at the complex. “Samuel is not our friend?”
He stares and Gene shrugs.
“No.” Atlas locks his jaw. “You didn’t see Samuel as I did. I cannot believe such. There have been too many—I don’t believe such.”
Gene slows her breathing and looks between his eyes. She frowns.
“This.” She motions to him and lowers her voice. “Naïvety or innocence?”
Atlas rubs his thumbs into his fingers, stares into her amber irises. Gene looks into his blue ones. The distant clouds rumble, trees rustle, and three, four, five vehicles speed past their sidewalk and ripple wrinkles in their clothing. Forehead crumpling, Gene spills a heavy breath and the corners of her mouth lift.
“I believe you,” she says. “And Samuel.”
Atlas nods. His fingers unclench.
Gene bursts into laughter.
“Are you,” Atlas eyes her up and down, “intoxicated like Samuel?”
Gene pinches air between her thumb and forefinger and squints through the gap. “Jus’ a little painkillers.”
Atlas looks over the sidewalk traveled. “Who is this ‘Dad’?”
Gene’s laughter explodes; she winces and grabs her side. “He’s crazy. You’re crazy. We’re all crazy.”
“Is Dad dangerous?”
“Only towards democrats.”
“Perhaps we should return to your home.”
“And explain to my dad what I’ve been doing for these two weeks?”
“Is he your acquaintance?”
Gene sighs and leans around Atlas. She stills. Her bottom lip trembles and her eyes brim and breath snags. Atlas bends down, finds her level, and reaches for her shoulder.
She walks past him. Gene sniffs, exhales, strides, eyes straight ahead. Lowering his arm, Atlas turns and follows her back to the apartment, hanging behind a meter.
“You do not run from all things, Gene,” Atlas says.
She slows her pace. Atlas catches up and watches their feet drum to the same rhythm and turn the apartments’ corner.
“I would scarcely describe the humming to your attempted murderer in the back of your vehicle and the soothing of his aggressor outside your hospital as cowardice.”
Gene makes a noise.
Atlas says, “You are all we have.”
A man yells something and Gene and Atlas lift their heads: Dad stands before them at the base of the stairwell. Samuel leans against the railing, arms folded. He smirks.
“Who are these men?” Dad narrows his eyes at Atlas’s white pants, at Gene’s bandaged arm. “Do you know about the massacre downtown this morning? Why haven’t you answered my calls? I’ve been to your house a dozen times since I left the airport and why does your work say you haven’t been in for weeks? The authorities called, Gene. The authorities. You were missing and your car was somewhere strange and your mom hasn’t stopped crying. What, in heaven’s name, happened in Montana?”
“Denim,” Samuel’s jaw drops, “now your dad’s gonna know we’re in the mob and that I’m your mob boss.” He points to Atlas. “That he’s Brick, our human shield, and we were rushing a Canadian-Mexican lab for poppies. Gonna know, Denim.”
“What in the world have you been doing, Gene? Your therapist said you canceled that appointment at seven and hasn’t seen you since.”
Samuel raises an eyebrow and grins over Dad’s shoulder. Gene hugs herself.
“You drive up in some tacky Mustang after being missing for days, looking like you were caught in an explosion—”
“Not tacky,” Samuel says.
Gene scuffs her shoe. “I know, it’s just—”
“An explosion isn’t pre
cisely what occurred,” Atlas says. “It was an Accend named Eden.”
“Not one bit. Eden 2.0 can go over 135 miles per hour now.”
Dad glances between them. “Who’s Eden? She goes 135 miles per hour? What happened? Are you pregnant?”
“NO, I am not pregnant. And Eden’s nobody, Dad. Nothing really happened.”
“What happened is the three of us embarked on a journey to recover my interdimensional travel coin and learn of impending war by locating The Presage.”
“—replaced the entire interior with new leather. Do you know how expensive—”
“What coin? War? What is going on, Gene?”
“We just went on a little road trip. That’s all.”
“And on such trip, we didn’t know, at the time, the coin would be at the bottom of the lake—”
“—335 horsepower. 335.”
“Lake? What lake—”
“Atlas, stop talking.”
“—but Eden’s horde of Accenda ambushed us and drove flames from their hands. We were forced to defend our lives with the very blades they—”
“If I hadn’t killed him at fifteen, my dad would be proud of my Mustang.”
“No, let the boy talk—”
“EVERYONE, STOP.”
Gene’s voice breaks and Dad and Atlas close their mouths, Samuel cocking his jaw to the side.
“I’m so sorry,” Gene says. “I know I should have told you everything but I didn’t because things have been crazy. I’m safe and fine and sorry. Just let me explain.”
Dad nods to Atlas and Samuel. “Start with them.”
“That’s Samuel and that’s—that’s Atlas.”
He squints at Atlas. “Are you a Greek, son?”
“I’m from Sider—”
“Okay.” Gene claps once. “Let’s go inside to talk.”
Samuel and Atlas angle toward the stairs. Resting a hand on Dad’s arm, Gene walks past Samuel and glances over her right shoulder, her left.
“Alone,” she says.
Atlas and Samuel freeze. Gene and Dad walk up the stairs, around and around rectangular spirals, and vanish behind railings, walls, steps. Samuel presses his lips together, eyes glistening.
Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn Page 32
